Police to look into reports Quirante group used for ’political gains’

A police line is placed around a house in a gated subdivision in Brgy. Tungkil, Minglanilla where Basilio ‘Nilo’ Quirante was killed in a shootout with police on Thursday morning, August 13, 2020. | Photo courtesy of Paul Lauro

CEBU CITY, Philippines – Police in Cebu will be looking into allegations that several individuals here have hired slain drug personality Basilio “Nilo” Quirante for political gains.

Police Brigadier General Albert Ignatius Ferro, director of the Police Regional Office in Central Visayas (PRO-7), said these were just some of the things they will be probing into Quirante’s life as a criminal.

Quirante was killed in a shootout with police in Barangay Tungkil, Minglanilla town in southern Cebu on Thursday dawn, August 13, 2020, where operatives served him with at least five warrants of arrest at around 3:30 a.m. in relation to charges of illegal drugs, illegal possession of firearms, and murder.

READ MORE: Most-wanted drug personality in Region 7 gunned down in ‘armed conflict’

He was the leader of a Cebu-based criminal syndicate known as the “Quirante group” reportedly involved in the illegal drugs trade and believed to have also operated as a ‘gun-for-hire’ group in the southwestern towns of Dumanjug and Ronda.

“We will have to check with his involvement in politically-motivated incidents in Central Visayas,” Ferro told reporters in a virtual press conference on Thursday.

Following Quirante’s death, Ferro also said they have tasked local police stations here to ‘closely monitor’ activities related to illegal drugs, particularly in southern Cebu.

“(Quirante’s death) will somehow affect the distribution of illegal drugs in Cebu, especially in terms of illegal drugs peddling. But as of now, maybe the south side of Cebu will have a reprieve. Nevertheless, we will conduct more operations to determine what other drug syndicates are out there,” he added.

It can be recalled that Quirante has also been the subject of surveillance done by cops from PRO- 7 in the past years. The highly documented instance, however, involved the death of a police officer in 2018.

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Asked why it took several years for authorities to capture Quirante, Ferro responded by saying it could be the fact that Central Visayas’ most wanted drug personality happened to be a former policeman.

“As far as I remember, and I believe, he was only dismissed from service maybe around 2000s or 2010 and onwards… He is definitely hard to capture, especially that he was an ex-policeman and he knows the trades and protocols of police units,” said Ferro in a mix of Cebuano and English.

Quirante’s right-hand man, identified as Faustino Sardines Torres, was also killed on Thursday’s encounter that happened inside a gated subdivision in Barangay Tungkil, Minglanilla. He too was issued with arrest warrants on charges similar to Quirante.

Ferro said they are also investigating who owned the house where Quirante and Torres stayed, and as to why they managed to travel to Minglanilla, a second-class municipality in Metro Cebu located approximately 60 kilometers north of Dumanjug, undetected.

Torres also happened to be the second most wanted criminal personality in Dumanjug town.  /bmjo